


Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

by busaikko



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angry Sex, M/M, Masturbation, lupin-snape:Fantasy_Fest_06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-28
Updated: 2006-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-30 15:28:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/333222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fantasy: odogoddess wanted "Snape comes in his tights/hose/boxers. Remus makes him. Tell us/show us why & how. Teen or adult. Shame, guilt, dub-con, non-con elements okay. Bonus for: tattoo/s (dark mark counts), near-public, against the wall, &/or Hogwarts Express."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [odogoddess](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=odogoddess).



> Betas: I made schemingreader tense and broke liseuse's heart.

Riding the train, the rhythm is memory, the sway of the carriage an embrace. Feet clamour up and down the corridor, walking, running, dragging trunks and cages. Students shout greetings to friends after the holidays. Remus remembers that fierce joy well. Going back to school was the resumption of the great adventures. Boyfriends, girlfriends, new clothes, new brooms, new breasts, awkward new height and even more awkward erections and clumsiness.

The door slams open then shut, and Remus tightens his hands under the travelling cloak that he purchased as his one vanity with Dumbledore's advance on his salary. He lets the students' words flow over him, glad that one of them is Harry Potter. Now he won't need to force his aching bones up and find the boy. He does not doubt that he _could_ find Harry amongst all the students. _He looks just like James. He has Lily's eyes,_ Dumbledore wrote. James. Lily. Remus will not open his eyes. Dead Peter and mad murdering Sirius. He will pretend to be asleep as long as he can, if it allows him to reweave the past in his dreams. From the past, one more name.

_Severus Snape is Potions master here, as perhaps you recall._

* * *

You're not touching me, Severus says, not ever again, not you.

Remus freezes, back to the door of the prefects' compartment, even though he is not a prefect anymore. He is glad that no one changed the password. He prefers to be crushed and humiliated in private. Especially by Severus, who has distilled vengeance to a potent spirit.

You never had any right to touch me, he says again, but Remus puts more trust in his blurring eyes than in his ears. Comfort, no, he never expects comfort, but he knows the warmth of being held in those strong, thin arms. He knows how to win, if not love, admiration and respect from those bottomless black eyes--or he did, he did.

He can remember begging three times in his life. Begging for his life; begging for release; begging for someone to tell him that what had happened had not happened. He is sixteen: he thinks now that no one that age should be so familiar with debasement.

Severus eats humiliation daily, but will never beg, Remus thinks. Why are you in Slytherin? he'd asked once in the lazy aftermath of sex, and Severus had smiled. Because I asked to be, he said, and at least it's a better answer than Remus could have given. Why Gryffindor? Because he hadn't wanted to be separated from the shy and clever boy who'd shared his sweets on the train. All the Pettigrews have been in Gryffindor, Peter'd said, I'm sure I'll be too. So Remus had taken a leap of faith and fallen hard.

Now an adult, awake and daydreaming on the train, he unravels the past to that wild evening in the Great Hall. Rain lashed them mercilessly from the moment they got off the train; every new first year stood shivering in puddles until the prefects were finally sent to take care of them with careless drying spells that sometimes scorched. He imagines how it would have been if both of them had been sorted into Ravenclaw. Imagines that Severus would have harnessed his mind to something broader than ambition; that Remus would have had the backbone to not follow just anyone's lead. That Remus could have confessed what he is, and Severus could have reacted with curiosity instead of fear. That there would have been something exquisite, hopeful and painful, about watching Severus strip daily in the dorm, and then one day having their eyes meet....

He knows it is a fantasy found in any number of cheap paperbacks, and he is grateful for the cloak over his knees because just the steady black gaze of his fantasy Severus has got him hard, here in the railway carriage, surrounded by students.

Hopeless, he thinks, and tries to keep happy thoughts at hand (he has a job to do), but he has too many memories.

The train in his memory sways, as well. He sees himself and sees Severus at sixteen, as clearly as if they had shed ghosts here long ago.

I want you, he says, one hand going to the luggage rack for balance. He means to continue: I want you to trust me, I want you to forgive me, I want you to hold me again.

You want me, Remus hears his younger self say instead, and cringes for him. It's not that simple. It never has been, and it never will be.

I want to watch you, Severus says, with unreadable blank eyes. Drop your trousers.

Don't do it, Remus thinks. Glare at him and walk out the door. Make him come to you. Live with it if he doesn't. People's hearts break all the time: have some dignity.

He pictures himself walking down the corridor, swaying as though drunk. In the carriage with James and Peter and Sirius, there would have been the exhausting effort of false smiles and denial, but over the long break he would have written bad poetry, got another tattoo, would have shaved the left side of his head for no reason or locked himself in his room with the Victrola and stayed there for days. And then it would have been done, the boil lanced, and the next time he saw Severus his eyes could have slipped past without lingering.

He cannot, on the train, as it rocks in darkness and danger, deny what did happen. Above the tawdry backdrop of might have, should have, could have, ought to have he sees the past replay.

He sees himself. His hands are at his waist, gaining resolve as he fumbles with his belt and flies. He shoves down boxes and trousers together. He is too thin, he thinks, as the heavy material pools around his ankles. He grew up but not out. He hates his knees, scabby and scarred. It's nothing that Severus hasn't seen before, he knows, but this is different.

Bring yourself off, Severus says, and Remus tells his younger self to just do it then, demean yourself, make Severus happy. He just wants to prove that you're a beast. Don't make him want you. He'll hate you for it. He'll hate me, years later. Stupid bastard, he thinks, watching himself unbuttoning his shirt deliberately, stroking his nipples, watching Severus. It's obvious that he is fantasizing about Severus: how those long, cool fingers feel on his skin, Severus' smile like sin at the way their bodies fit together.

Remus tries to remember that he hadn't known that his horrible awkwardness, his inability to think around Severus, his daydreams and his wet dreams meant that he was in love. By the time he did realise it he knew Severus despised him, and that they'd never see each other again.

Years and years under the bridge, and then the letter from Dumbledore came.

One of sixteen-year-old Remus' hands slides down into the thatch of hair that still surprises him (puberty came late for him: unlike Severus, he still doesn't need to shave more than every third day). His pubic hair curls around and over his balls as he cups them, trying to imitate the moving pictures in James' dirty books but afraid that he just looks foolish.

He chances a look up at Severus through his fringe. Severus stands perfectly still, watching; it takes a moment to realise how very quickly he is breathing, and then Remus smiles, faintly, as he touches himself. His cock is hardening; he leans back against the door, not caring that anyone passing in the corridor will have a perfect view of his arse through the window. He can't spread his legs without awkward messing about with shoes and socks, and he wants to be able to run away quickly if necessary, but he thinks Severus likes it when he is immobilised, anyway.

Severus shifts, almost imperceptibly, as Remus raises his hand and wets his palm. His mouth is going dry: he has to lick four or five times before it is as slick as he likes. As he tightens his fingers around his cock he stares at Severus. Is he thinking about my mouth on his cock? Remus was terrified the first time, because he had _wanted_ to do it, and he had never formulated his thoughts quite so clearly before. I want cock. I want Severus' cock. In my hands (yes, many times), rubbing up against me (furtive desperation in the loo), in my mouth. He'd half-expected Severus to hex him the second he sat back on his heels, mouth tasting of Severus' come. He'd crossed the line into perversion; he had been so very very grateful when Severus made it clear that they were crossing together.

Remembering, Remus wonders why it never occurred to him that Severus must have been just as blind terrified ignorant as he was, expecting rejection for the way his hands tangled in Remus' hair, the way he thrust into Remus' mouth. A secret's no good if another person knows it, Remus thinks. He has a history of betrayed secrets; all the ones that remain with him, he thinks, will die with him, unspoken. That much he can do.

Remus' awkward young self sometimes dreams about kissing Severus the way his friends kiss girls. He never expects sweet words or gifts, he can't comprehend wanting to hold hands, of all things. But after letting Severus finally fuck him, both of them drunk in the room of the Muggle Studies professor (gone away for a wedding), he thinks about kissing, with tongue. That would be nice.

His mouth is still dry; he keeps licking his lips, and he is sure that this is not sexy, but he can't stop. He is caught up with wanking, hard and fast now, audible above the rhythm of the train wheels; his other hand has gone back to his nipples. Severus likes to bite them, roll them between his teeth, hold them captive and tease them with his tongue. Remus twists one nipple between his fingers, bites back a moan, and stares imploringly at Severus. And licks his lips again.

Severus shudders, bending over, takes one step forward to keep from falling. Remus thinks for one glorious second that Severus has forgiven him. Will embrace him. It sends him over the brink and his come hits the floor hard. But when he opens his eyes Severus is still standing there, out of reach.

Werewolf, Severus says, and spits. Dirty, dangerous, and depraved. Get out, Severus says, and that it is his after-sex voice makes Remus want to cry. He pulls his clothes back on hastily, realising that he has completely lost control of time. He stumbles back to his friends, empty-hearted, broken-souled, makes some excuse about feeling ill, and pulls his robes up over his head. He pretends to sleep all the way to King's Cross Station, and manages not to let the tears come until he is under the crisp lilac-smelling sheets at his grandmother's house.

He wonders what Severus would say if he knew. In a few hours, he could tell him himself. He could stand behind Severus' chair at the head of the Great Hall, lean down to speak privately, and say the words. I still love you, he could say, and he allows himself a brief fantasy of _that_ , and it is all hand-holding and kissing with tongue, because he is older now and knows what he wants.

But he still, he reflects, doesn't know how to get what he wants.

He wonders how he's going to screw things up this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the following poem:
>
>> > OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking,  
> Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,  
> Out of the Ninth-month midnight,  
> Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander’d alone, bare-headed, barefoot,  
> Down from the shower’d halo,  
> Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive,  
> Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,  
> From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,  
> From your memories, sad brother—from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,  
> From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,  
> From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist,  
> From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,  
> From the myriad thence-arous’d words,  
> From the word stronger and more delicious than any,  
> From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,  
> As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,  
> Borne hither—ere all eludes me, hurriedly,  
> A man—yet by these tears a little boy again,  
> Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,  
> I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,  
> Taking all hints to use them—but swiftly leaping beyond them,  
> A reminiscence sing.  
> [Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking](http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/roots/legacy/whitman/cradleweb.html), Walt Whitman


End file.
